A Thermador burner that clicks without lighting, and a simmer that will not hold

A gas rangetop is the least electronic appliance in the kitchen and the one people most often assume is beyond help. It is usually the opposite. A burner that will not light is a short list: gas, spark, path, and geometry. We work through it in that order.

Clicking without lighting

A burner that clicks is telling you the spark circuit works. What it is not telling you is whether gas is arriving at the port, or whether the spark is landing where the gas is.

The most common cause in a working kitchen is the simplest: the burner cap is not seated square. These caps have a locating pattern, and a cap sitting a millimetre proud puts the flame path away from the electrode. Boil-over grit under the cap does the same thing. Second most common is a wet or fouled electrode — spark takes the easiest path, and a film of grease across the ceramic gives it an easier one than the air gap.

If every burner clicks when you turn one knob, that is a switch or a module issue, not a burner issue. If nothing clicks at all, check that the appliance still has power. Gas rangetops need electricity for ignition, and the circuit they are on is easy to forget when a breaker trips.

Flame quality tells you about the port, not the gas

A flame that lifts off the burner, roars, or burns yellow and soft is almost always an air-to-gas mixture problem. Blocked ports from years of boil-over, a distorted burner cap, an air shutter that has moved, or an orifice sized for a different fuel all produce it.

That last one matters if an appliance has been moved between houses or converted between natural gas and propane. A conversion is not a settings change — it is physical orifices and, on many appliances, a regulator change. If a rangetop came with a house and its history is unknown, the fuel it was set up for is the first thing worth confirming.

The simmer setting is where Thermador rangetops earn their keep

The low end of the burner range is the hardest thing a gas cooktop does. Holding a genuinely low flame without it going out depends on a clean port pattern, a correctly adjusted low-flame screw in the valve, and a valve whose grease has not hardened. When a low setting starts creeping up, or drops out and needs relighting, it is normally the valve rather than the burner.

Valve stems that have gone stiff or gritty are worth attention early. Turning harder against a seizing stem is how a stem snaps, and that turns a service call into a parts wait.

Storms, spark modules and boards

The Jacksonville area averages roughly 68 thunderstorm days a year. The spark module on a rangetop is a low-voltage electronic component sitting on ordinary house power, and it is one of the first casualties of a rough summer week. Symptoms after a storm are distinctive: continuous clicking that will not stop even with all knobs off, or ignition that works on some burners and not others in a pattern that has nothing to do with which burner you use most.

A slide-in or freestanding range adds an oven cavity to all of the above, with its own sensor, elements or gas burner, and door. Those are covered in the same visit.

What we do

Flat $80 diagnostic, credited toward the repair when you approve it. We check gas supply and regulation, spark output, port and cap condition, valve action across the full range, and — on any sealed component — leak-test what we touch before we leave. Genuine OEM parts, 90 days labor, 365 days parts.

Gas work is not a place for improvisation. If we find something that belongs to your gas supplier or to a licensed plumber rather than to the appliance, we will tell you plainly rather than work around it.